A Return Walk – Take One

Where does history begin? If you ask the Americans, it all began with them and the concept of performance art did surface in the US in the early seventies.1 But before anyone named it individual artists were using their own bodies in their art. Artists have always blurred the lines among art, life and politics. Who was first is not easy to track as most of what is done is forgotten. The whole obsession about who was first touch the more important question what makes it into the historybooks? Who has the power of attention?

Then there is the question of artistic curiosity. What was the fire that burnt in the hearts of the people who explored performance art? What did they search for? A way to immerse into a bodily experience? A meeting between bodies.2